Key
by Chronos Keeper
Summary: Indoor swordplay and homophones. One of the many instances in which Dave is taught the BAMF ways of being a Strider.


Bro is yet again at his ineffable antics. Dave emerges from his online forays when he hears unorthodox clattering coming from the main room, to find his brother busily setting up a few stacks of cinderblocks. Where the dude gets these is beyond Dave,and how the fuck he gets them up the stairs or elevator is similarly mystifying. But he doesn't ask, partly because it sounds like a question that would have an obvious answer that Dave simply isn't grasping, but also partly because it would give Bro the satisfaction of Dave looking like a chump. So he just pretends it's as obvious as it is obviously strange.

Instead, he raises a quizical eyebrow as he hovers between the hall and living room, eying the mess scattered around the carpet. It looked as if Bro had cleared away anything that might get tangled underfoot, like wires and empty boxes and the occasional roaming puppet, and was now laying out planks across the evenly spaced blocks. He glances over his shoulder when he senses another person, and grins at Dave without turning around fully. "Hey, man. Am I bothering you?" He turns away as if Dave's response doesn't worry him too much, and spaces out the planks for whatever reason, using the width of his hand as a gauge.

It's kinda like getting stabbed in the heart by an icicle. SO COOL.

Dave makes some noncommital noise, and pulls himself off the doorway before he can become a permanent fixture in the moulding. "What in the Christ are you doing?"

"I am..." he trails off as he crouches at one end of the cinderblock/plank structure and bounces from foot to foot, judging the straightness of his handiwork. "...training. And making you train."

Didn't they have a roof for this? Why was all of this crap in the living room and not up there. "Uh, I think you might have missed the roof by, like, one flight, dude. But hey, that's cool, I mean, in your old age, I can understand your senility. We can pick up some gingko bilboa from that health food store with that cashier chick you oggle every time we hit up the taco stand."

"Yeaaaah! Ice burn my little man," is all that, and a wider grin, bro offers in response, acknowledging the dig with the appropriate hand shake

While Dave did not let it seep to his face, he couldn't help but smile inwardly that he'd managed to land a touch. "So why aren't you on the roof building your fort?"

Bro frowns lightly as he stands to survey his work, and nods. "Maintenance caught me up there trying to set up," he finally admits, casting him a wry look. "An' I mean," he holds open his palms, as if weighing scales. "I could just hang out up there for a few hours while they dick around and try to fix the AC, maxing out my speed so they can't see me violating building code by setting up my training gear. Or I could just do it in the privacy of my apartment." The latter sentence is voiced in over the top stuffiness, and he brings himself up to his full height to look stiffly down his nose, before a grin cracks his face, and he eases back into his normal slump.

"Okay, so this is training stuff."

"Yup." Bro pulls off his cap to scruff at his hair, releasing pent up heat, then jams it back on. "Go grab your katana."

Dave furrows his eyebrows at Bro, letting him know that this impingment on his free time is not welcome, but he slouches back to his bedroom to pull it off his sword rack. He briefly attends to his computer, which is patiently running a billion different things at once and somehow not suffering an aneurysm. Rose is bitching about her mom burning dinner, Jade's away message is up, and John is pestering Dave for help on an algebra equation. Algebra is definitely not his thing, so he suggests John ask his dad, and gets a ":" in response.

Whatever, he's got his own shit to do. When he comes back in, he hears Bro suck in a sharp breath, and let it go in an explosive exhale that mirrors the downward sweep of his blade. It cleaves the solid wood as easily as it had air, and the two pieces of the plank sag together to drop to the floor with a muted thump. Dave likes seeing this stuff; when his brother's not being lazy, he's incredibly physically accomplished, and it's never old watching him wreck shit with such finesse.

Bro recovers from his lunge, and steps to one side to motion Dave forward. "C'mon, man. Try your hand at the plank."

Dave scuffs over, dropping in a movie reference as he asks, "Shouldn't be be doing this with our bare hands?" Not expecting an answer, he drops into his own, fairly common stance. He readies himself, takes in a breath- gotta be dead on, otherwise he'll just send the planks everywhere- and swings. The blade, to his credit, sinks a few inches into the plank and refuses to move further in any direction. "Aw COME ON."

Bro doesn't laugh, probably because he can spot how red Dave's ears are, even through his mess of hair. He reaches over and deftly free the blade. "Dawg, you're not feelin' it."

"What? God, if I were feeling it anymore, they'd need a restraining order against me."

Bro laughs this time, and says, "Nah, you don't get what I'm saying. You've got your technique on, but you're missing the ki."

"Key? Okay, so what does this key unlock. Why is it so important." He hates it when his brother pulls this cryptic bullshit, all Master Po up in his grill. It makes him feel like a moron.

For a second, Bro pauses, as if his mind got caught on some mental snag. Then, he lets off another of his easy chuckles. "Nah, nah, you're missing it. Not 'keeey'," he elaborates, drawing out and emphasizing the long flatness of the vowel. "Ki." The sound is shorter, like a brief puff of breath.

Dave hears the difference, and facepalms. "Oh God, seriously? You're seriously pulling that crappy kung fu movie stuff on me? You're just bigger and stronger than I am, and you've been doing this for years," he grumps, a little miffed that his brother is resorting to movie terminology.

Bro cocks his head at his younger brother, one rasied eyebrow disappearing under the brim of his hat. "You don't believe me? Alright, I'll show you." He readies himself again. "Without ki," he states, and lunges. While his sword definitely does embed further into the plank, it doesn't lop through it like it had before. With a grimace, Bro frees it, and flows back into his starting stance. "With ki." He takes a breath, and Dave feels a subtle push from his brother, not really physical seeing as he's well out of reach, but it's something that sends his hairs on end. Bro swings again, and there isn't even the sound of the blade impacting, it just cuts straight through the wood, and it is testament to his bro's control that it doesn't continue its arc and into the floor. The boards quietly clatter to the ground. They couldn't have been split cleaner by a diamond tipped saw.

"Ki, brah. Ki."

Dave wants to call bullshit. He wants to chew his brother out, claim it's all physical strength but in all honesty that was probably the coolest demonstration ever that ki actually exists. Because there's no way that the pulse he felt right before bro swung was coincidence or in his mind. "How the hell do you do that." It's not a question, because if he'd actually asked, he wouldn't have been able to stop himself from sounding like some starstruck teenager.

Bro looks a little dismayed, and then changes his expression to one that Dave hates; it's the one where something about Dave specifically seems to click inside his brainpan, where something makes sense. "Takes years of practice, man. But I think you got it, you just gotta know how to draw it out."

Yes, that was the lead in he needed. Bro made it easy for him, whether by design or coincidence, he didn't know. "So. Show me."

Bro smiles. "Prepare to be schooled, m'boy."

Pesterlog

tG: its all like streetfighter up in this bitch

tG: an im all awwwww yeah hadoken motherfuckers

tG: got my ki on and shit

eB: :B

tG: shut up john 


End file.
